Jetpack Joyride

Apple is currently doing a Facebook promotion that lets you download Jetpack Joyride for free. All you have to do is click here and follow the instructions, and it generates a code that you can redeem in iTunes. It’s easy and it gets you a very fun game for nothing. If you’re not sure what Jetpack Joyride is, read our review here.

Over on the Washington Post, grade six student Madeline Messer asks a good question: If so many women and girls are playing endless running games (like Jetpack Joyride and Temple Run), why are female character options so scarce? And when they are present, why does it usually cost money to unlock them?

These biases affect young girls like me. The lack of girl characters implies that girls are not equal to boys and they don’t deserve characters that look like them. I am a girl; I prefer being a girl in these games. I do not want to pay to be a girl.

It’s not so crazy to expect good things from Halfbrick at this point, given their record of successful titles like Fruit Ninja. The studio’s latest title, Jetpack Joyride, is a fun diversion, but doesn’t quite have the hooks to make it truly excellent.

Jetpack Joyride has a lot in common with another Halfbrick game, Monster Dash. The two games both feature the grisled action hero Barry Steakfries, and both games are similarly well-suited for short sessions, relying on satisfying core mechanics and procedurally-generated levels rather than a sweeping narrative or meticulously designed puzzles. Also inherited from Monster Dash are some specific weapons and vehicles, as well as Halfbrick’s characteristic charm.

It’s all rainbows and sunshine.

You begin the game by piloting a machine gun jetpack, which was found in Monster Dash. As you automatically move left to right and tap the screen to use your jetpack, your distance travelled gets tallied. It’s a fairly typical auto-runner in that regard. However, the action isn’t exactly that simple. You’ll collect coins (more on that later), and a couple different kinds of power-ups.

Scattered through each level are vehicle upgrades, which allow you to drive one of a handful of different fantastical machines. One of them is a mechanical glider of sorts that is a funny comment on the odd correlation of bird-themed games and good, old-fashioned money. Other than the Profit Bird, there’s an anti-gravity suit, a motorcycle, and a couple more rides that break up the action and allow you an extra hit before you’re finished.

No-fly zone.

So few games make in-game death interesting at all, but Jetpack Joyride has an enjoyable mini-game for when Mr. Steakfries has bitten the dust. As you play, you’ll see floating tokens, which earn you spins on a slot machine after you die. Often, you’ll just win a few extra coins or nothing at all, but you can also get inserted right back into the action with nary a scratch. There are other prizes as well, such as bombs to give you a few more meters on your score or bonuses for your next session. This addition makes death a little less disappointing, and certainly puts you in the mood to play again.

There’s a fairly compelling structure to the game, which would be fairly bland if it was just a score chasing affair. The game introduces little challenges to tackle, and completing them will level you up. Some of them are pretty neat, as they introduce entirely unique objectives to the game, but a few of the missions are simply to get you to buy in-game items. The game’s item shop isn’t bad, but it’s fairly bare in terms of loot that actually affects the gameplay. Of course, you can buy in-game coins with real money if you’re feeling impatient, but most of the game’s upgrades are solely cosmetic. It’s good that there’s the aforementioned leveling system, because the item shop by itself doesn’t provide an especially convincing reason to keep coming back.

Even if it’s not quite a masterpiece, Jetpack Joyride is really enjoyable and worth a look. It’s a great fit for mobile devices, and fans of Halfbrick’s other work shouldn’t be disappointed. Hopefully they keep working on this game and introduce some more content to the game’s shop, because we feel like there’s some untapped potential here.

Connect with us

Latest Recommended Games

The fine folks at Milkbag games have released Sidewords. A fun little diversion of a word game that is the devil child of crosswords and scrabble. For each level in the game the grid must be completed to win the level — this means that each letter at the top and side must be used. And not just the top or side, but each word must be made up of letters from the top and side to create a grid. It’s a pain, but in the right kind of way. Even the simplest of the levels can be a head scratcher until you get used to the game. Well worth the $3 as a diversion while we wait for Milkbag to finally release Snow Siege.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math.

It’s not always easy to tear your kids away from their tablets and make them do something edifying. Thankfully, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math relieves you of this task by turning mathematics into a fun touchscreen video game. Win win!

Aimed at children 3-6 years old, the app makes math fun by ‘gamifying’ it, turning simple mathematics problems into little challenges so that your pre-schooler can learn and play at the same time.

There are more than two dozen mini-games, split across three categories: Numbers, Shapes and Measurements, and Add and Subtract. According to the developer the difficulty of these puzzles is adaptive too, so kids of any ability can be both encouraged and challenged.

Mini Dayz has launched and it’s a pixelated 2.5D open world that’s as brutal as the desktop version. In this game, the player is dumped on shore with nothing. They must scavenge around for food, water, and weapons while avoiding attack. It’s the kind of game where the goal is to stay alive as long as possible. But that will never be very long. It’s oddly free and seems to only have an ad on the main screen — for now.

Pewter Games has brought their charming point and click adventure The Little Acre to iOS. It’s an amazingly beautiful animated adventure set in a sort of hybrid magical / alien world. A great all ages adventure and very fun.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games. There’s a reason Leonardo Da Vinci is the only renaissance figure who routinely shows up in video games you know. With his remarkable inventiveness and genius for creative problem-solving, Da Vinci was a gamer through and through. He was just born 500 hundred years too soon. Thankfully, there are studios like Blue Brain Games to bring him to life in videogame form. The House of Da Vinci, which comes to us courtesy of a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, is a puzzler that seeks to channel the artistry and innovation of its title character.

You play as one of Da Vinci’s more promising apprentices, and you have the challenging task of trying to work out where the hell he’s gone. Was he assassinated by the church? Who knows. Has he quietly gone into a retirement? Perhaps. Did he accidentally invent a shrink ray and shrink himself down to the size of an dustmite? Probably not. Da Vinci’s workshop looks beautiful, thanks to some impressive 3D graphics, and the in-game environment is crammed with all the elaborate machines and crazy inventions you’d expect to find in the workplace of a renaissance genius.(more…)

Poly Bridge is out now on iOS, and it’s good to have it! It’s a great game and many seem to agree that it’s the best bridge builder game available. But the iOS versions, so far, is missing the sandbox mode. I would hope that it’s coming soon in an update. If you are all interested in physics puzzlers, grab this one. (Note: the video is for the PC version, I have yet to see a trailer for the mobile version, the developer Dry Cactus isn’t that great at marketing…)

Advertisement

Apple, the Apple logo, Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Other terms may be trademarks of their respective companies.